It Doesn't Mean What You Think
by Tazo
Summary: They're just objects. But to someone, they mean the world. What do these objects mean to the crew, to the passengers, to those chasing them?
1. Wash

A series of short stories about the crew and passengers of Serenity and objects that are important to them. I've got two written so far, and if I get one up this week and produce one a week from here on out, I should have gotten through all the main characters by the time the movie is released. I think.

After the movie's released, I've got a story written for one of the movie characters that I'll put up. Also, does anyone know of any good Firefly fic LJ communities? I'm looking for other places to post this.

Firefly is created by Joss Wheadon and has had it's ownership tossed between too many companies for me to care about keeping track.

* * *

"Wash? Wash!"

Wash snapped out of his trance and looked up behind him to see Mal with an exasperated expression on his face. "Yeah, Mal?" Wash asked.

"Aren't you supposed to be looking for that part Bester was asking about?"

Wash stood up and faced Mal. "I guess I could, but it'd be a wasted effort. There's nothing on this rock even _resembling _what Bester was asking for."

Mal sighed. "Meaning what?"

Wash shrugged. "No idea. I'm just the pilot. I know how to work the engine, but as for how it works, I don't have the foggiest idea." Wash trailed off. He shrugged again. "Honestly? I think Bester made the part up so he could get some more time trying to get in someone's pants."

Mal cursed. "Alright, I'm going to go talk to that boy. Zoe, go to the Scorpion, find out if Marshall's arrived yet with the cargo. If he's not by the time we're ready to leave, we leave. I can't be bothered to be making up for other people's mistakes."

Mal stalked off in the direction of the dock. Zoe watched his retreating form for a while before turning to Wash. She was rather unsurprised to find that he had gone back to peering in at the store window. "We need to go to the Scorpion. It's not the kind of place I'd like to go without an extra set of eyes."

"Just a second," Wash said. He held his hands over his eyes and squinted into the window, looking for all the 'verse like an eight year old boy trying to peek into a candy store.

Zoe stepped next to him and tried to see through the dusty window. "And what is it that has so enraptured your attention?" she asked.

"Those," Wash responded, pointing at something in a glass case on the far end of the store.

Zoe wiped off some of the window's dust with her sleeve and looked again. "Toys?" she asked finally.

"No, dinosaurs," Wash said. "There's a critical difference."

"That being?"

"Dinosaurs are so much more interesting than regular toys. You can do only one thing with a top, you know, spin it. Or jacks. All you can do with jacks is play jacks. But you can have all _sorts_ of fun with those dinosaurs."

Zoe looked down at him and raised an eyebrow slightly.

Wash seemed to sense this. "Well, _I_ can," he corrected.

"Wash, unless I'm mistaken, those things are from Earth-That-Was."

"Yeah," Wash admitted. "Made of plastic."

"Plastic, which is made from oil. Which was made from dinosaurs-"

"-to begin with, I know." Wash finished. "That's why it's so much fun. You're playing with dinosaurs made of dinosaurs."

"Why are you even wasting your time with these? We don't have money in our budget for recreational purchases. Especially anything as _antique_ as those. God only knows how much those cost." She glanced down at him. "Why does a grown man play with toys anyway?"

Wash stood up from his little kid position. He scratched his head. "I guess it's a way of connecting with my inner child."

Zoe gave him another disapproving look. "Your inner child?"

Wash smiled at her. "Yeah. My inner child. The part of you that's locked at eight or nine and still wants to be a ninja or something. Passes notes in class, runs around with a wooden sword fighting invisible bad guys. The fun part with no inhibitions."

"And is it wise for a pilot of a smuggling ship to listen to his inner child?"

Wash shrugged. "If I didn't, I wouldn't even be here. I was almost ready to be set up as a tour guide on Gemini. But my inner child wanted to visit the stars." He knelt down and peered through the window again. "Always wanted to do that. Go to other worlds. Be out in the black. The very edge of space and back. See it all." He chuckled. "My mom told me once that when I was five my favorite thing to do would be to get a bunch of chairs together, form my own spaceship, and have all these adventures outrunning the Reavers."

Zoe turned back to the store window and stared in with him. They were silent for a while. "They've even got a little plastic tree," she said finally.

"Yeah," Wash said, a little dreamily.

"You know, we do have work to do," Zoe said.

"Yeah, I know," Wash said as he slowly stood up. He glanced around. "Where's Jayne?" he asked. "I'd feel better with him around."

Zoe raised an eyebrow. "You don't think I can handle any trouble?"

"No, I'm sure you can. I don't think that _I_ can handle any trouble. Jayne can watch your back while I cower in a corner somewhere."

Zoe smirked slightly.

"I'll go find him," Wash said. "I'm sure whatever hole he's drinking himself into a stupor in is no place for a lady. Far too offensive an odor."

As Wash wandered off, Zoe stood in front of the store window and stared at the glass case with the dinosaurs, fingering her personal stash she had hidden in the lining of her vest.

* * *

"Well, now that we've got ourselves a _new_ genius mechanic, can we please leave?" Mal asked. Marshall hadn't shown and his patience was starting to reach its limit. 

Wash nodded. He pointed a finger at the new mechanic and frowned. "I'm sorry, I've already forgotten your name."

The young girl smiled brightly at him. "It's no problem. Kaylee. A 'K' followed by 'Lee'".

"Ah. Wash. A 'Wa' followed by 'Sh'. I need you in the engine room for take off."

Kaylee nodded and disappeared down the stairs.

"Alright," Wash heard Mal say as he climbed up to the cockpit. "Zoe, go make sure Jayne isn't bleeding all over everything. I don't want to have to make him clean up any more than I have to. Cleaning supplies cost money."

Wash sat down in the pilot's seat and leapt up almost immediately. Someone had put a small box on his seat.

He opened the box and his eyes widened. He set it down next to him and started to flick the overhead switches. He glanced down at the box.

"From a 'secret admirer'? Nah. I'm the only one that childish and immature."

As the ship started coasting out of the atmosphere and into the black, Wash reached into the box next to him and pulled out the dinosaurs. He made them fight for a few minutes before he started arrange them on an empty spot on the console. He grabbed the palm tree and placed it between them. "Perfect," he said. He looked out the forward windows and back down at the dinosaurs. "I've been thinking," he said to them. "Maybe I should shave my moustache. What do you guys think? I think it makes me look too old."

"I think it makes you look like a child molester," Zoe said, stepping into the cabin. She took the co-pilot's seat and stared out into the blackness.

Wash blinked a few times. "A child molester?" He scratched the offending facial hair. "Well, that tears it. Moustache goes."

"Good to hear," Zoe said.

He coughed, trying to look less hurt about it than he truly was.

In a rare response, she smiled at him, a real genuine Zoe-smile -- which made him all tingly. And then she left, her footsteps barely a whisper on the floor.


	2. Jayne

Jayne scowled into his drink. "You call this donkey's piss whiskey?"

"No, I call it booze. Do you want more or not?"

Jayne grunted and shoved his glass over to the bartender. "It must have alcohol in it. No ruttin' way I'd drink this shit sober."

"Look, if all you're gonna do is sit in my bar and moan about the quality of my hooch, you can get out."

"If it'll make you shut up and keep the booze coming, I'll stop. Happy now?"

There was the unmistakable sound of the door swinging open and the sound of booted feet walking in. Twelve feet, if Jayne's estimation was right.

"Then again," he said, throwing some change on the counter. "There's a lot to be said for leaving."

He turned around to see, yes, six heavily armed men staring at him with violence in their eyes. Five of them seemed to be grouped around a taller one in the center.

The other five were chumps. Local goons who generally expected to be able to scare people by waving their guns around. Jayne remembered some of them from his younger days. The one in the center though.. Definitely wasn't from around here.

Tall and lank, wearing a hat that belied his off world origin. No one around this dump could afford a hat like that. It was his eyes, though, that set him apart. Not goon's eyes or thug's eyes. Not even a local slum boss' eyes.

No, these were killers eyes.

"You Jayne Cobb?" the Killer asked. If he was holding a weapon he was keeping it hidden under the folds of his duster.

Jayne turned back to his drink and sipped at it. "Might be. Might not be. Who's it that's being so nosy?"

"You took our father's cattle you gutless son of a-" one of the other men started to say before the Killer held up his hand.

"I represent a family who believe that you have unfairly taken their cattle and wounded the patriarch in the process. They seek compensation."

Jayne snorted. "Hell, I gave 'em compensation. Those cattle weren't there's to begin with. The bullet in their father's gut is compensation."

The Killer walked up to Jayne and leaned on the bar next to him. He looked down at Jayne and smiled. Jayne suddenly got a good look at the Killer's gun . A _really_ good look.

"See, that's where I think the misunderstanding come into play. You mistakenly thought that those were your family's cattle. Now, I can easily see how that mistake could be made. Cattle do tend to look alike. And I'm sure that, with the difficulty of your sister's illness, allowances could be-"

Jayne suddenly produced a knife from somewhere and shoved in front of the Killer's throat. "Don't you ever talk about my sister you ruttin' piece of niu shi. She's too good to have your type talking about her."

"Then, by extension, you shouldn't be talking about her either," the Killer said. He smiled slowly. "Good. I was hoping it would go like this."

Most of the people knew that Jayne was back in town for a while and had stopped off at the bar.

Therefore, most people knew to ignore any and all sounds that might be coming out of said bar until Jayne was back _out_ of town.

"Now see, that's a mighty fine gun. Man could take on a whole squadron of purple bullies with this. If he could use it right."

The goon who had tried to yell at Jayne whimpered as he held the Calahan Auto-Lock in a shaking hand. He looked at the gun eagerly, hoping to find salvation in it.

"Yep. That is a might fine gun. Lucky thing you grabbed it from that hired dandy when I slit his throat." He looked up at the goon and smiled. "Hey, I got an idea. Let's say whoever wins this fight gets to keep the gun."

The goon grunted and pulled the trigger.

Still smiling, Jayne calmly grabbed the barrel of the gun and pulled it out of his shaking hands. He pulled his pistol out and pointed at the goon. " 'Course, being a man who knows what he's doing, that hired dandy wouldn't have left the safety off of a weapon he had stored pointing at his foot."

He pulled the trigger and the gun gave a light click.

The goon screamed and scrabbled across the floor and out the door. Jayne holstered his gun and started inspecting his new gun.

The bartender peered over the bar. "Please tell me you're going to pay for this?"

Jayne looked up from the gun. "Why?" he responded, "they're the ones who caused this." He glanced behind him. "Well, I am kind of responsible for the piss in the corner."

He dug a coin of his pocket and flipped it onto a table before returning his attention back to his new acquisition. "This is a _nice_ gun. I should give you a name…"


End file.
